When it’s time to perform — on stage, in the boardroom, in the bedroom — confidence is the essential mental component to strong execution. Even solo activities, like being able to fall asleep at night, are aided by self-confidence (“I’m a good sleeper!”).
The substantive way to increase your confidence in life, it seems, is to rack up a series of wins. Experience = confidence (usually). Of course, accumulating experience takes time. And if you’re always pushing yourself into uncomfortably new situations, as high performers tend to do, you often won’t have experience to draw upon that can fuel your inner confidence.
So there are a range of more “shallow” ways to increase confidence — tips and tricks and hacks that function like a placebo effect for confidence. Things that make you feel more confident, even if, as a matter of fact, there’s no substantive reason why the hack should increase your real-world performance.
Superstitious routines come to mind. The baseball player who taps on home plate with his bat a few times, in exactly the same way, before each pitch. The public speaker who re-ties her shoes in exactly the same way just before going on stage.
Following a “meaningless” routine can calm the mind, which creates the space for quiet confidence to flood the mind. A hyperactive mind is rarely a confident one.
Luxury goods can generate a confidence placebo effect; in fact, I’d argue this placebo constitutes most of their practical value. Wearing a fancy watch, toting a fancy hand bag. These are things that do nothing to actually help you perform in the business room but they can lend a certain swagger to the person showing off the luxury good. Even if no one sees the watch on your arm the entire meeting — so there’s no external signaling going on, which is the other function to a luxury good — if you feel like a baller while wearing it, you’ll feel more confident doing whatever you’re doing.
Enhancements to physical appearance serve as a confidence placebo. Women wear makeup and sometimes don’t look any better physically as a result but feel more attractive, which results in confidence, and confidence tends to be a very attractive trait. Mission accomplished, if indirectly.
A subtle example of a confidence placebo in business is how we rely upon and invoke studies and data. Many studies about business and success are bullshit. You know how it goes: Seven graduate students hung out in a lab and one person who was wearing a brown jacket decided he didn’t want to buy the product and so now we must conclude a Very Important Fact about all humans who wear brown jackets. We cling to studies and reports and data in part because it gives us confidence in the intuitions we want to act on. It gives us confidence in the anecdotes we’ve heard and want to synthesize. When you’re a CEO and about to walk on stage in front of your employees to announce a pivotal decision, knowing that “some researchers at Yale” support some element of your decision gives you the confidence to announce, with a clear voice, your point of view. Confidence aids decisiveness.
If you’ve read a bestselling book about sleep that’s replete with faulty studies but your knowledge of the “studies” enhances your confidence about sleep — I’ve perfectly calibrated the temperature of the room to what studies say is the optimal temperature! — then you may well sleep better. And if the “data” behind power posing is questionable, well, hey, if power posing gives you greater confidence before performing, it’s probably still worth it.
There can be nothing wrong with placebos. And remember that — studies show! — that even if you’re aware that you’re benefitting from a placebo effect, it doesn’t fully negate the effect. So knowing which placebos help with confidence in-the-moment can give any performer an edge.
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When confidence is helpful for performance is an interesting nuance here. Obviously at the time of performance you want to be confident. But if you’re too confident too far ahead of the time of performance it might lead you to under prepare beforehand. Suppose you need to deliver a key presentation at work in a month’s time. If you’re too confident, too early on, you might not spend the cycles preparing that actually will improve performance substantively. Confidence placebos are ideal just before the time of performance.
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(Hat tip to Russ Roberts, Steve Dodson, and Andy McKenzie for conversations that inspired and helped make up this post.)
Hmm. Some of the most confident people I’ve ever known were obviously suffering from the overconfidence effect.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention faking confidence, i.e,. recognizing one’s own lack of ability in a given task, but pretending that one has it in spades. I mean, look at Trump—manifestly one of the most insecure people on earth—and how he’s yet convinced millions of people that he’s very competent as president, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Once I went to visit some rather unsavory acquaintances concerning a business deal at their hill-top compound. There were no cars about, but I thought maybe someone was home, and I got out out of my car and knocked on the door.
No one answered, so I turned to leave, and found myself surrounded by five large, unfriendly-looking pit bull dogs.
To say I was terrified is an understatement. They undoubtedly could have torn me apart if I’d shown the fear I felt or made a sudden move.
I had little choice but to try to get to my car twenty feet away—after all, I couldn’t stand there forever—so I puffed my chest out and proceeded to walk towards my car with great swagger; like I was the biggest, baddest motherfucker on earth.
Those surly curs eyed me with suspicion, but seeming unsure that they should attack me, watched me step with long, measured strides to the car door.
I’ll never forget their steely eyes with their tiny pupils, surveying me with the uncertainty of their crisis of confidence.
Feeling infinite relief at the touch of the door’s handle, I slowly opened it and slid into the driver’s seat with perfect cool.
Shutting the door, I reached over and turned on the radio to listen to some soothing reggae.
Instead of Sugar Minott singing “Mr. DC”, some actor portraying Marc Antony was intoning at that moment the words “…let slip the dogs of war”.
I’ve always thought *God* has a dry sense of humor, but my fake supreme confidence served me as well as Trump’s serves Trump.